THE Catholic Church was especially emphatic about the cash gifts being given to congressmen and local officials nationwide, saying in so many words that the Arroyo administration has lost its moral grounds with this latest indecent act.
With so many officials having their say on the subject, it's perhaps best to recall that the Catholic Church itself had been the subject of the Palace's generosity last year, when they were called into a meeting with President Arroyo and some of them were supposedly given envelopes amounting to hundreds of thousands of pesos.
In fact the amount was supposedly intended for the Church's various projects and as far as we can recall, there was no united stance by the Church to reject the money offered to them by the Palace officials.
Okay so they may have considered the money to be donations by the national government though the timing of the funds release and the Charter change campaign, which is being revived anew is curious.
So we have the same predicament one year later except that the Palace gave the money to people with less obligations and moral compunctions than clergy who are answerable to God and God cannot be cowed and manipulated like the people.
Whatever the reasons behind the cash giveaways, the sight of powerful people getting huge amounts of money while soldiers of the Republic are denied their combat pay and Civilian Auxiliary Forces Geographical Units (Cafgus) members have a hard time securing their honoraria is simply nauseating.
It's also nauseating to see these government officials managing to spend millions of pesos in government money to watch Manny Pacquiao fight live in Las Vegas while barefoot children and their parents have to content themselves listening to radio or if their government officials are generous, watch it on the town plaza.
This is not to say of course that a change in government or a change in political system, especially one that purportedly claims to be the people's savior while torching private company property in order to extort protection money would solve these problems.
Rather if this administration were to give cash away, it would at least have the common sense to issue them in receipts and choose who among the government officials would be rewarded with such largesse.
One Siquijor governor complained that his province didn't receive any largesse even if they have a small revenue allotment from the National Government. Favoritism, of course, but that ought to be corrected.
